TIRUNELVELI: It's three years since police stormed
Melapalayam
, a Muslim ghetto in the heart of Tirunelveli city, to question family members of the accused in the Bengaluru bomb blast case of April 17, 2013.
A low intensity explosion close to the BJP headquarters in Bengaluru injured 17 people and gutted some vehicles. Anger and anguish persist in the colony of around two lakh Muslims as they had to bear the brunt of the police `investigation'. On either side of the narrow lanes, houses are crammed together and many of them share walls. With literacy levels abysmally low, women earn a living rolling beedis. Over the years, little has changed in Melapalayam with youth here remaining prime targets of police, who shop here for suspects.
A few days after the blast, police picked up K Peer Mohiddeen and J Basheer from a Chennai lodge, while Kitchan Buhari was `nabbed' in Madurai. All three were from Melapalayam and were alleged to have links with the banned Al Umma outfit, which emerged before the serial Coimbatore bomb blasts in 1998. “I met Bengaluru police and so many other authorities. I handed over a petition to the chief minister's cell at the secretariat. I believe my husband is innocent but no one believes us,“ said Samsunisha, 28, wife of Basheer. She looks after her husband's three sons from his first marriage and their own young daughter.
Disheartened and disillusioned, Muslims here are keen to boycott the assembly election. “What is the point? We are saddled with the terror tag.If anything happens anywhere, even outside Tamil Nadu, we are picked up and questioned and arrested,“ said M Shahul Hameed, 29, a school dropout. Melapalayam residents are unmoved by the election promises of AIADMK and DMK candidates Hyder Ali and T P M Mohideen Khan and a host of other parties and Muslim outfits. “Over the years, they have done nothing for us, except harassing us and taking away our sons to prison on trumped up charges,“ said Kitchan Buhari's mother Thoulat Beevi. “When I saw him in the Bengaluru prison soon after his arrest, he was limping and his face and body were discoloured. We learnt he was tortured and that they gave him electric shock. He did not tell us anything,“ said Beevi breaking down. Most are dalit converts, Muslims for about five generations. “They are easy pickings for police here. Media has picturised them as terrorists,“ said T Paramasivan, Tamil scholar and cultural anthropologist, who lives in Tirunelveli.
Said a retired police officer, who has served in the region: “Many of them could indeed be innocent, but we are dependent on courts of law to prove this. They could well be victims of a police mindset, some with a certain social bias,“ he said. But, in the Palayamkottai constituency , there are strong party affiliations, with leanings towards the ruling party and DMK. “While they have traditionally backed DMK, the recent arrests of Muslims in terror cases have instilled mistrust in the community ,“ said Mohammed Ilias, Arabic lecturer in a local college and brother of Mohammed Moosa, convicted in the Coimbatore blasts case and lodged in Palayamkottai prison.
In Melapalayam, there is still fear and suspicion of outsiders. Women rarely come out of their homes and those who do are only the likes of Samsunisha and Thoulat Beevi, who visit Bengaluru prison once a month to offer solace to Basheer and Buhari.